Initiatives aiming to facilitate the transition towards open science are urgently needed. Many initiatives are already being undertaken. It is important to investigate and monitor the extent to which stakeholder actions contribute to innovations in open science. Results of such evidence-based research must be shared to show which actions we should support to move forward and which actions to abandon. Communication on successes is needed, but also on failures and actions that do not work.

The solution

Facilitate evidence-based research on innovations in academic communication, while selecting and financially supporting new models.

Adopt an evidence-based approach for mainstreaming open science.

Demonstrate the benefits of opening scientific processes for scientists as well as society.

Investigate how stakeholders can contribute to innovations in open science. '

Define and disseminate good practices and corresponding principles.

Concrete actions

All stakeholders: explore other ways of sharing result outputs, to serve the purpose of open science. Let the public participate in the selection of scientific topics through online platforms.

National authorities and European Commission: actively contribute to peer learning about national policies, e.g. within the framework of the development of the European Research Area (ERA).

National authorities and European Commission: set up research programmes on developments in open access/open science to answer questions regarding the optimal road to open science, the advantages of open science for society at large etc.

Research funders: investigate how funding streams could be innovated to make science more open and innovative. Show best practices. For instance, finance research on the level of grant-based funding (in any discipline) that allows science to perform at its best and finance research on how to best align funding schemes with open access principles. Accept uncertainty and pilots in open science research (more flexible funding, smaller scale, faster). Create a funding mechanism to explore paybacks to open science.

Researchers and research institutes: collaborate in research into innovations in open science.

Do a proper literature review in eco research: it will show that incentives usually do not work as intended, so you do not want to base policy on them.

Gather evidence of what is already being done by funders to support Open Access + Open Data. Identify exemplars of what works well and what methods/models could be adopted by other funders. If funders seem conservative, it is because they are a reflection of the conservatism of their communities.

Anonymous

Open science (open scholarship, open research) looks very different in different disciplines and subject areas. There are good reasons for this, some of which are implicit in the epistemologies of those disciplines. This needs to be more explicitly recognised throughout this section.